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Over the last couple of years, I have noticed two
simultaneous trends about media coverage of GMOs. First, a largerproportion of
GMO stories highlight and dispute popular myths surrounding GMOs. Second, the
comments on these articles and reasons given to be skeptical or wary of GMOs
have not appreciably changed.

A recent New York Times article covered a Hawaiian County
Councilman’s decision over a vote to ban GMOs on the big island of Hawaii.
Although it was oddly somewhat child-like in its presentation of the process
(Claim A is brought up. Claim A is disputed. Claim B is considered. Claim B is
disregarded…) the tone of the piece was clearly intended to highlight the value
of scientific skepticism. That the councilman, Greggor Ilagan, voted against
the ban because it was founded on specious arguments portrayed him as a free
thinker among a populism-driven council. Naturally, his side lost and the ban
was put into effect.

Many of the comments on the NYTimes article mirrored those
of the supporters who attended the council hearings in Hawaii. A minority
defend GMOs as safe and useful tools. The majority, however, assert their
beliefs that GMOs harm their health or their environment. Anti-GMO positions usually fall into a few
categories: Concerns over the health and safety of eating GMOs. Skepticism of
biotech companies (read: Monsanto). Ecological concerns. The benefits of alternative
agricultural practices. I hope to spend time with each of these topics over the
coming weeks and months. Most are blown out of proportion; many are unfounded.
Some, however, do come down to personal stance and belief.

The recent changes in GMO coverage appear to stem from a
desire by news organizations to avoid false balance. The standard journalistic practice
of neutrally informing the public of both sides of an argument is only valid
when there are two even sides. When consensus has yet to be reached. When
opinions, morals, or ethics are at stake more than facts. The difficult part of
covering GMOs as a topic is that this technology encompasses both broad
scientific consensus about its safety and
opinions about the proper use of GMOs in agriculture. (And that’s all before we
get into misconceptions of the facts that influence people’s opinions.) It is
difficult to adequately address these different aspects of the public debate
surrounding GMOs because they really lie on different planes.

Plant scientists won’t rest easy until wishy-washy opinions
stop influencing scientific policy. GMO skeptics won’t be satisfied as long as
their opinions are tossed out even once the facts are agreed upon (which, by
the way, rarely happens).

New technologies are messy. My view is that a technological
advance is neutral. Our applications of a new technology can be positive or
negative. We can split the atom and incinerate cities or fuel them. GMOs have
been used fairly conservatively thus far and yet through a combination of
pretty terrible PR from biotech companies, an anti-corporate mood throughout
the country, and public skepticism driven partly by a false dichotomy between
natural and artificial, they remain a pariah in the public eye. Hell, at the
end of the day, some would-be opponents say it doesn't even matter. (But
ssshhh, don’t tell the commenters that).

The debate surrounding GMOs has lately been described as the left’s own version of climate science denial. Sometimes I use that analogy when
trying to drive home how one cannot rely on intuition when assessing a new
technology. One has to seek out the facts. Certainly no political party is
immune to anti-scientific bias and the progressive left has taken up anti-GMO
stances for years now. There is no need to equate GMOs and climate change. But
there are similarities in the process
by which both global warming and agricultural GMOs are attacked. And process
matters.

My own anecdotal contribution to this layman’s media
coverage comes from Reddit. Reddit, popularly understood to be largely made up
of young, white progressives from North America, has taken a rabid anti-GMO
stance for years. (The voting system of Reddit allows one to determine which
opinions are most popular, reddiquette be damned.) I've often joined these comment
threads to defend the benefits of GMOs or point our popular misconceptions
about the technology. Usually I am called out a shill for Monsanto. Lovely.

But over the last couple of years, the top comments have
increasingly pointed out misconceptions, biases and untruths in the primary
article. More reasonable discussions about the benefits and dangers of GMOs
have, slowly, beaten out the vitriol. Perhaps the broader shifts in media
coverage of GMOs are in fact slowly trickling through the internet and end up
as slightly-more-nuanced discussions rather than ad hominem attacks. If only we could get On The Media to be as
interested in this particular topic as they are in asserting that NPR isn't biased!

P.S. If Nathanael Johnson at Grist hadn't beaten me to it, a
six month adventure of teasing apart the incredibly intricate issues
surrounding GMOs would be right up my alley. I’m still catching up with the
coverage, but what I've seen so far suggests it is well worth a read. Check it out.

Dating — online or off — is frustrating and bewildering, a long and tearful journey to a great partner. While technology has absolutely transformed how we find potential dates, the most significant change is cultural. Instead of settling down with someone “good enough” we ask so much from our partners now that it’s only natural the search for them is arduous.

Our conversations about civic matters—economic policies, schooling systems, religion, science, and social institutions—are severely lacking in nuance and reasoned debate. Instead, what flourishes are simplistic arguments and ad hominem attacks. This trend is strengthened by a media environment where we can easily consume pieces tailored to our point of view, avoiding challenge and change.

On Being is a weekly public radio show hosted by Krista Tippett ostensibly about religion and spirituality, but now the host of a broader series of discussions called the Civil Conversations Project. I used to turn off On Being when it came on my radio Sunday afternoons, put off by the wispy quality, assuming it was a liberal echo chamber of feel-good, empty spirituality.

But as I would listen in snippets, or accidentally turn it on in the car, I found it to be a series of careful, respectful dialogues about difficult subjects, with religion, of course, among the trickiest.

So it did not altogether surprise me to find myself enchanted by arecent episode on gay marriage, which really became a window into how to have civil debates. An interview of David Blankenhorn and Jonathon Rauch—originally on opposite sides of the gay marriage debate, and now friends in agreement on many issues—the discussion covered David’s changed mind on gay marriage, but much more interestingly their process of what they called “achieving disagreement.”

For this post I really want to excerpt some longer segments that, I think, speak for themselves. I encourage listening to the full episode. To have two people agree about how to disagree, that are intellectually honest in their point of view and empathetic enough to consider the other side is tragically rare these days and models a better way to converse. I think we can learn from them how to continue to passionately disagree while remaining not just polite, but truly civil.